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Patient health education materials are an important resource for both caregivers and patients, allowing health care providers to provide important information to patients for their ongoing care in a written format. This may include printed pamphlets handed out at the conclusion of a hospital visit, emergency department discharge instructions, and electronic resources patients can access from home during their recovery.

Like many health authorities, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and Providence Health Care (PHC) manage databases of such materials, and each has recently upgraded the website used to provide access to these resources for staff and the public. Using our Andornot Discovery Interface, two modern, accessible and mobile-friendly search engine sites were built, one for VCH and one for PHC:

Vancouver Coastal Health Patient Health Education Materials

Staff and patients may search by keyword or select a health topic from the home page, then narrow their results by topic, format and critically, language, as many resources are available in multiple-language translations.

Spelling corrections, search suggestions and relevancy-ranked results also help connect a user with a resource quickly and accurately, and a synonym list helps connect different terms for a condition to the same resources. For example, a search for blood clots returns the same results as a search for coagulation, and vice versa, allowing different terms to be used to find all relevant resources.

When viewing a record, those available translations are shown so a user can quickly select the best version for their needs.

Related Records

Many records provide the PDF online for patients and staff to access, but staff may also use these systems to monitor resources which are under review, or to request that a review be initiated or obtain other information about the resource.

A table view of search results is available for rapid scanning of resources, primarily for health care staff already familiar with the resources who only need quick access to the relevant PDF.

Table View

Behind the scenes, a DB/TextWorks database shared by both VCH and PHC is used to catalogue and manage the resources.

The two sites are hosted by Andornot, along with the DB/TextWorks software and database, as part of our managed hosting service.

Andornot works with health authorities throughout British Columbia and across Canada to provide information management solutions for other patient health resources and health care libraries.

FPInnovations is a private, not-for-profit R&D organization that specializes in the creation of solutions that accelerate the growth of the Canadian forest sector and its affiliated industries to enhance their global competitiveness.

As part of its mandate, FPInnovations maintains a research library of in-house reports and other publications available to members and in some cases, the public and all industry.

This research library was recently made available through an instance of our Andornot Discovery Interface search engine, at https://library.fpinnovations.ca

FPInnovations Research Library Search Results

This site provides searchable access to over 10,000 reports and publications covering more than 50 years of FPInnovations’ research. Subject areas include forest operations, wood products and pulp, paper and bio-sourced products, with full text PDF reports immediately available online.

Spelling corrections, search suggestions and relevancy-ranked results connect users to resources quickly, with the ability to further limit results by industry sector, research area, material, type, date of publication and other facets of the collection.

spelling correction

A DB/TextWorks database is used behind the scenes to catalogue and manage the reports.

This new resource complements two related Andonot projects:

  1. the ThinkWood Research Library; and
  2. the B.C. Wood Supplier Directory.

British Columbia is recognized as a global leader in sustainable forest management and British Columbia’s wood product suppliers offer a wide range of high-quality wood in both construction and appearance grades. Over 400 manufacturers in B.C. deliver a variety of commodity and specialized wood products – from dimensional lumber, engineered, mass timber and speciality products, to furniture, doors and windows, pulp, paper and pellets.

A searchable directory of these suppliers is available at https://suppliers.naturallywood.com to connect buyers, especially from outside B.C., with suppliers and their products.

B.C. Wood Supplier Directory Search Results

Users may search and browse by product, species and value-added service to find companies that meet their needs. The site is powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface.

A curated synonym list ensures that users can enter terms they are familiar with, or acronyms, and find relevant resources described using different terms. For example, a search for clt finds resources described with that acronym, as well as the fuller term cross laminated timber, and variations such as xlam, x-lam, and cross-lam, without a user having to think of each of these terms and use Boolean logic to combine them, or search each separately.

Spelling corrections, search suggestions and relevancy-ranked results speed the search process, with the ability to further limit results by product, species, service, export markets and sustainability certifications held by suppliers.

Behind the scenes, a DB/TextWorks database and one of Andornot's Starter Kits is used to manage the supplier information. The B.C. Wood Supplier Database is a project of Forestry Innovation Investment, a publicly owned, funded and operated company of the province of British Columbia. It was set up by the government to promote BC wood products, educate on provincial forest practices, and provide research around sustainable forest management, life cycle analysis and the benefits of using wood products.

This forestry resource complements two other Andornot Projects:

  1. The ThinkWood Research Library (also offered by Forestry Innovation Investment); and
  2. The FPInnovations’ Research Library.

So sad, but today I had to inform a client that the files they had saved  from an old PC did not contain their Inmagic DB/TextWorks database.   They had been subjected to a ransom ware attack and when they did not pay, various files were deleted or corrupted.   They had no backup, so it is 10 years work cataloging their collection gone.

We have had other clients lose their entire databases in the past.  One hit Batch Delete instead of Delete Record and also had no backups.  Another was a bizarre incident when the client was actually copying files to their external drive to make a backup, went for a coffee and a fire broke out in their building.  Both the PC and their only backup were destroyed. A third client had an overzealous IT guy permanently delete all her files as he didn’t think they were important.

There are several ways to make backups of your Inmagic DB/TextWorks databases if you do not have an IT department that takes care of this for you. 

Our recommended approach is to use software that runs in the background on your PC or network to backup all your data to either an external disk, or a cloud service. This way you "set it and forget it" and don't have to remember to do anything. Most of these applications and services will notify if there's a problem with the backup (but it's always a good idea to check periodically, and try restoring a database from a backup, to make sure it worked).

If this approach proves challenging to implement, then a simpler but less foolproof method is just to copy the folder with your databases in it to a USB stick and take it home or to another offsite location.  Do not just put it in your desk drawer! You can find where your textbases are on your PC or network by choosing Display > Textbase information from within DB/TextWorks.  The downside here is you have to remember to do this (e.g. every Friday) and to bring the USB stick back again for the next backup.

If you have all the actual textbase files stored safely, you can also regularly create dump files of exported records that can be reloaded if need be.  The easiest way to do this is from the menu screen by choosing Manage Textbases > Dump textbase.  These dump files are in plain text and can be opened in Notepad or Word, so as a last resort, the textbase can be recreated by scanning these and figuring out field names. They are not usually large files so you can even email them to yourself so the attachment is stored in your email system.  (The above information applies to the non-SQL version of DB/TextWorks. Clients with DB/Text for SQL versions should ensure their IT staff are aware of the recommendations in the Administrators Guide available from the Inmagic extranet. 

You can never have too many backups in too many different formats, so a combination of all of the above is also a good idea.

Clients who are taking advantage of our hosting service can be assured that the databases we host for you are safely backed up. We manage our own hosting environment and servers in a state-of-the-art co-location facility in Vancouver, Canada

Backing up your image files is of course recommended too!  Andornot is now offering a Digital Asset Storage and Cloud Backup service if you have terabytes of data that you wish to store offsite.

Contact us for more information.

The Widener University Archives collects, preserves, and provides access to print and digital materials such as papers, photographs, publications, audiovisual items and memorabilia related to the history of Widener University, in Pennsylvania, and its predecessor institutions.

Widener University Archives

A separate, more specific archive, the Sexuality Archives, contains the pamphlets, papers, newsletters, books, journals and audiovisual materials related to the history of Sexuality, Sexology and Sexuality Education as well as Widener's Human Sexuality program.

Both of these collections are now searchable online using Andornot's Discovery Interface at

With a graphic design that matches the university's branding, and features such as spelling corrections, relevancy-ranked results, and facets such as Subject, Name, and Decade to narrow results, these sites help researchers quickly locate materials of interest.

Andornot worked with archives staff to upgrade their older DB/TextWorks databases to use our Archives Starter Kit, create new databases from Excel spreadsheets, and clean up some of the data, before developing the new web search interfaces and retiring previous ones. Both web search engines are hosted by Andornot.

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